Brewer’s Kitchen: Splinter Twin in Legacy

Wait. Wasn’t this a Modern deck? And now you’re telling me that it’s viable in Legacy?

My name is Niklas Holtmann, this is my first guest article at Snapcardster and I’m not talking about a 100% competitive Legacy deck, but about a deck I had some success and just like to tell other people about stuff that’s not too mainstream. Welcome to Brewer’s Kitchen.

How it all started

On my way back home from MKM Frankfurt 2017 I just had this idea to play Splinter Twin in Legacy. Why? I’m not really sure about it, I just had a really bad tournament with Elves, a deck I was running hot with the last couple of months (Top 64 in Chiba and good results at our local tournaments), but after the ban of Sensei’s Divining Top I wasn’t really sure how to play with the deck so I ran my good old Elves without Natural Order which was really good for me in a format where Sensei’s Divining Top was legal. Needless to say, I was wrong. playing against Storm and Show&Tell was horrible.

Back to the drive home, I thought playing something like Splinter Twin could be really funny to troll people and to have some fun with blue cards in Legacy. After my ride home I didn’t think a lot about the deck until me and my friends were traveling to Hamburg for a weekend of Magic, alcohol and friends we don’t see that often, so I just went with it and played the following list:

So I have to admit, this deck wasn’t 100% my idea. Two years back I read an article on mtgthesource about a guy (Ma Ansbro) who made Top8 at the Eternal Weekend in the US with a Splinter Twin Deck that was Jeskai colors (well, he had Dig Through Time in his deck), so I took his list as an inspiration. The other inspiration was the ModernBlood MoonSplinter Twin deck.

I thought about the meta game I saw in Frankfurt and thought to myself that I have to punish all the greedy BUG Leovold Decks and the best thing I could find was Blood Moon and I really wanted to try out Splinter Twin just for the LOLs.

Due to my succes in that tournament I was hyped and thought about how I could improve the deck and what was good and bad about the deck. So obviously the worst thing in the deck is the Splinter TwinCombo and the deck wasn’t able to answer True-Name Nemesis and Sword of Fire and Ice, otherwise the deck was great, you can really get Legacy Players of guard with the combo and to Blood Moon out someone out of the game is awesome.

So I had to look at the bad cards in the deck which were:

Deceiver Exarch: the stats are just bad and it gets blocked by nearly everything in the format and it isn’t really a clock.

Umezawa’s Jitte: It was always bad due to the fact that all of my creatures are bad

Due to the fact that True-Name Nemesis was so hard to deal with and the best color to answer it is black, I shifted to splashing black in my deck, furthermore I cut Deceiver Exarch and replaced it with the 4th Pestermite and 2 Baleful Strix just because I thought that Delver is a bad Matchup, but having some Flyers to block and kill delver + being able to stall Gurmag Angler is really powerful.

With some more tournaments under my belt with the deck I came to the following list:

So why should YOU play this Deck?

Well, when you are a highly competitive player I can’t recommend playing the deck, just because there are some really hard match ups that need a lot of brainpower to win those and in some matchups you just lose Game 1 since you have so many bad cards in your deck. But when you are a johnny like me who just wants to try something different it’s a super good deck to do so, not because of the Twin Combo, but because of the power of Blood Moon and Jace.

The deck is super consistent in what it’s doing and Blood Mooning people out of the game is just one of the best things you can do in magic.

The next positive thing about the deck is that you have so many basics and you’re basically immune to Wasteland and slamming Jace consistently on turn 4 is really strong.

Last but not least, winning with Splinter Twin in Legacy is super funny due to the fact that there are many Legacy players out there who don’t know the combo and just randomly lose to it and as I said the LOLs are on your side.

I like to board out some number of Force of Will against Delver decks just because of the card advantage, but also like some to get rid of threats that are hard to beat like True-Name Nemesis or to protect Blood Moon from countermagic. Pestermite isn’t that bad against Delver just because it blocks Delver and taps Gurmag Angler.

Lands

I think this is probably the best matchup you can get. They can’t beat Blood Moon game 1 and even if they get to Marit Lage you can just tap it the whole time. I had a game once where I tapped down Marit Lage for 5 turns with Fire // Ice or block it with Vendilion Clique and finish him off with the combo. The next advantage is putting their Life from the Loam on the bottom with Clique. You are also immune to their Wasteland.

Sneak & Show

Another good matchup for our deck, we have good countermagic and can leave up mana to flash a threat in at the end of their turn. After boarding it get’s even better just because we have more countermagic and surgical extraction. The only weakspot for us is Boseiju, Who Shelters All, that’s why I tend to not board out Blood Moon.

Boarding Plan against Sneak & Show

Sadly there are more cards you could board out but that’s ok, your cards are super efficient while their cards aren’t. You could argue to board out a Jace and they second Fire // Ice for the Strix to have a cantrip, but I like to win a counter war and than just play Jace to win the game. Fire // Ice can tap their lands and cantrip which I think is very helpful to buy a turn.

Czech Pile

This matchup is super tough, you will loose game 1 most of the time just because you have the Splinter Twin combo in your deck and they are a much better controldeck in game 1. That being said Blood Moon can still win you the game. The sad thing is that you always need an answer for Deathrite Shaman.

Game 2 gets a lot better just because they will fetch basics and cripple their manabase. Three Jaces are a real powerhouse in this matchup, but still it will be very tough for you.

I’m not a big fan of Spell Pierce in matchups that go very long but being able to counter a Jace is very important. I bring in one Flusterstorm just because I think having too many forces against a deck that wants to 2 for 1 is not the place you want to be, but in the late game it’s often a dead card. You could bring in Pyroclasm as another removal for Deathrite Shamans but I think that’s to much with all the removal you already have.

What’s next?

I will continue playing the deck because I have a lot of fun grinding it and my results with it are pretty good for now.

If you like to want to know about more matchup or if you have general questions, hit me up on Facebook or Twitter 🙂

Niklas 'Hulkman' Holtmann is your man for the spiciest legacy brews. His experience in strange legacy decks ranges from Elves, Splinter Twin and various Jace decks. He's the definition of Johnny when it comes to playing Magic at Grand Prix level.